Daughter
by Tayijo
Summary: Claire Novak was still young enough not to shatter the first time she was taught that God didn't give a damn what human beings did to each other.
1. Judges 11:36

I'm not sure how well this story has aged. The show did their own thing with up-aged Claire Novak, but that was after I'd stopped watching, so. I still like this one, for whatever that's worth. This story was betad by castielpoops on tumblr, who also inspired it with her Claire/fallen angel graphics. It was made into a podfic by athornintheheart ( /works/965269). Content advisory for murder, scant affection for canon main characters, and discussion of American evangelical Christianity including loss of faith.

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Judges 11:36

And she said to him, "My father, you have opened your mouth to the LORD; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the LORD has avenged you on your enemies."

* * *

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* * *

Claire Novak was still young enough not to shatter the first time she was taught that God didn't give a damn what human beings did to each other. She was a bright child, and earnest. When the pastor at her family's little Baptist church mentioned in one of his twice-weekly sermons how scandalous it was that so many Christians had never read the whole Bible, she went straight home and opened hers up to the first page: _In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth._

She lost momentum when working her way through Leviticus. Even a smart ten-year-old could get bored with endless lists of measurements for a building that no longer existed. It got much more exciting in Joshua and Judges, with stories packed with gore and obscenity she barely understood. Claire made it to Judges chapter 11 before she started to wonder if the pastor really knew what he was doing, telling people to read this. The story of Jephthah's daughter, burnt on an altar of stone as the price for God's assistance in battle, made her cry hot, helpless tears.

Her faith didn't shatter, but when she put her Bible away, its shine was a little dimmer than when she started. It is difficult to be ten, and devout, and a girl.

* * *

The first time Claire met an angel face to face, he was walking her father's body out of her house, out of her family, into the cold. Snowflakes like splinters of sparkling glass fell from a hard, heavy sky and left dark marks on his trench coat. The air was frozen, but its cold didn't compare to her father's face, transformed into something ethereal and alien.

She didn't tell her mother what she'd seen, just retreated to her hollow bedroom and buried her face in her pillow. She was in the habit of praying every night: for her mother to be happy again, for the bank to stop sending letters about the mortgage, for the starving children in Africa. That night, though, as she choked her grief into her pillowcase, she took it all back. _Please, God. I'll never ask for anything else, I'll give anything you want, anything. Anything. Just give me back my dad_.

Every night after that for almost a year, she polished the same prayer over and over with every breath she took, until it was thin and fragile and as full of spider-webbed cracks as her heart.

* * *

 _Hi, baby_.

For a long time- two hours, almost three- it seemed like God had answered her prayer freely, without a demand for a sacrifice in return. Her dad's voice was full of shaky tears, but he was real, and solid, and smiling as he helped her set the table. It was everything she'd dreamed about. Her family sat down to dinner, so normal it scared her, and she had to keep reminding herself that it was OK to move, to speak, that this wasn't an illusion about to shatter.

Claire could still see the cracks where each of them was broken, but for the first time in a long time all the pieces were gathered together and pressed tight at the seams until everything was the right shape, the kind of shape that might one day knit itself back together. It seemed like her father was back to stay. Didn't that mean that God was watching, that He'd listened to all the bargains she'd tried to make with Him? She even let herself hope that the price wouldn't be too great. Maybe God would ask for something she could give. When she grew up she could become a pastor's wife, or a missionary, instead of a surgeon like she'd wanted to be since she saw a National Geographic special on brain tumors. Maybe God would be appeased with that small sacrifice.

Then she stood frozen in the doorway as her father beat their next-door neighbor's skull in, his blood spraying across the living room, and she knew it wasn't going to be that easy.

* * *

Afterward, only fragments of memory remained. The cold sting of the slap when the demon inside her mother broke the world apart. The damp, iron smell of the warehouse. The shocking redness of the bullet wound against the white of her father's shirt. Her bitter, silent prayer: _Me for him, that's the deal. You can do what you want with me, just save my dad_. Everything else was erased in the searing white light of Grace.

It was unlike anything she'd ever felt before, so far beyond pain that she had no reference for it. Later, she tried to decide what she would say, if she ever found someone to tell, someone who could be trusted. It was like swallowing a volcano mid-eruption. Like diving into the heart of the sun. Like Hiroshima, like disintegration in one pure, perfect instant.

The words aren't sufficient to describe something that's beyond language, and eventually she stops trying. It's not like there's anyone to tell. The one person who would understand is out there in the world somewhere, walking around still on fire. Her bargain was stupid and pointless and didn't save her father, and she never opens her mouth to say a single word about it.

She's almost twelve now, and she's passed through the fire and out the other side. When the flames washed out the palms of her hands and back into the father who loved her, she was broken apart and remade. The volcano spat her back out fused into glass, a piece of obsidian with new sharp edges and hard surfaces that drank in every scrap of light. She knows things, sees the old familiar stories in a different way. Jephthah's bargain was a cheat, his god a betrayer who didn't notice his daughter's blood boiling on scorched stones. God doesn't remember the name of Jephthah's daughter any more than He remembers the people killed in the rage rained down on Earth by his children's squabbles. Asking Him for love is entirely pointless.

God's indifference isn't the only thing she saw in the fire. The angel Castiel became her and she became him. She knows him now, intimately, knows the architecture of his heart. Centuries of memory remain in her head. She can recall the textures of the streets of Heaven, the hidden corners and back alleyways and the beings who walk them. She's seen the true faces of Castiel's superiors, heard the voices of his brothers and sisters as they bounce through the spaces between atoms. She knows how they die.

* * *

The damage isn't visible from the outside, or maybe her mother is too shaken to notice. In their new town, Claire's new identity is unnatural and stiff, like a mask, and like a mask she can hide every ugly thing behind it. Joan Whittington is a shy, sweet girl who doesn't talk much in class, not a scorched cinder, not an empty vessel. Her new name makes it easier to hide, even from herself.

It gets smoother with practice. She learns to arrange her face into a smile again, and to respond when her teachers call her Joan. She tells her classmates that her parents are divorced. "My dad lives in Milwaukee," she says, and she doesn't cry herself to sleep at night. She also doesn't pray anymore. Things burned to ashes can't be remade.

The night the angels fall, Claire is rolling the trash can out to the curb in front of their builder-beige apartment in a Houston suburb. The first blazing streak ends over the horizon to the east. Then there are hundreds of them burning through the night sky, like Heaven is shaking in a windstorm and the angels are being knocked loose like rotten fruit.

She stands motionless in the quiet twilight for half an hour after the falling stops. She's waiting, stupidly, for the rest of the end of the world, for the whole sky to ignite, for the moon to turn to blood, for the peal of a trumpet to shake the ground beneath her feet. The air is still and breathless with anticipation. For the first time in a long time, the burned up place where her heart used to be is fizzing with sparks.


	2. 2 Thessalonians 1:9

2 Thessalonians 1:9

They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the LORD and from the glory of his might.

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* * *

The first time it happens is the afternoon after the meteor shower. Claire stops by the Kroger to buy milk on the way home from school, and she runs into him in the cereal aisle. He would look like a normal man to anyone else, she's pretty sure, but there's something about him that catches her eye. It might be the birdlike tilt of his head, or maybe the solemn chill in his eyes. Maybe it's the intent way he reads the nutrition labels on each cereal box one by one. Whatever it is that betrays him, she's certain he's an angel.

She abandons her basket of groceries to follow him through the store, and hides behind a display of tomatoes to spy on him as he fumbles his way through paying for a box of donuts, a bag of peaches, some Lucky Charms. He strides out the door like he doesn't know how not to be on a mission. When he walks between two bulky SUVs in the parking lot, she speeds up until she's right behind him. It surprises her that she is able to get close enough to touch him before he whirls around.

He looks confused, off-balance, almost frail. Claire is sympathetic, briefly. She doesn't have a plan, isn't entirely sure why she followed him. Her mind is blank, almost peaceful, and she pauses for a second, wondering what he sees when he looks at her. Can he tell how hollowed out she is? Does she look like a burnt-up husk, or only human, inconsequential, interchangeable?

"What do you want?" he asks. She says nothing. He's weaker and smaller than she remembers angels ever being. Maybe the fall changed him- or maybe it's something in her that's different now.

"What do you want?" he asks again, and then a slice of silver appears in his hand. Interesting. He raises the angel blade and centuries of muscle memory take over. She isn't Castiel, not anymore, but her body is Castiel's body, and it's been years but that's nothing compared to the experience of eons of war. The angel is disarmed before she even makes the conscious decision to try.

She holds the blade to his throat. The tip rests in the hollow underneath his adam's apple. When he swallows dryly, he looks exquisitely human and afraid. Claire wants the sight to be thrilling, but it only leaves her cold.

"What do you want?" He whispers this time. She takes a long breath, considering. Then she flicks her wrist and opens his throat.

She half-expects an explosion of light, but all she gets is a face full of arterial blood. It's heavy and humid and the body crumpled on the pavement is anti-climactic. She realizes suddenly, sharply, that she didn't say a word to him. She should have asked questions. She doesn't know why the angels fell, or how, or who might be behind it- although she suspects she knows the answer to that last question, the two looming figures from her nightmares that accompany the back of her father's head as it recedes into dimness.

It's OK. She can interrogate the next one.

She takes the back streets home. It's 3 in the afternoon, and it's remarkably lucky that no one stops her to ask why she's covered in blood.

 _What do you want?_ The fallen asked her.

The rhythm of her sneakers on the asphalt beats out her answer. _I want my dad back._

* * *

She keeps the angel blade. She likes it- it's poetic. It's also effective, which feels important. Best of all, her hands remember the way to curl her wrist and slide the blade up her sleeve and into another dimension. This comes in handy eight days and five kills later, when the police turn out to be much closer than she expects. They come around the corner of the alleyway and see her covered in blood next to the body of what looks like a teenage girl. She twists the blade away and widens her eyes.

Her appearance works in her favor, and she exploits it as much as she can, letting a tremble work its way into her voice and hands and fluttering her eyes closed so her eyelashes rest innocently on her cheeks. The cops assume before she says anything that she's a witness, not the perpetrator, which makes it easy to lie to them. She describes a tall, muscular man with short brown hair- she's thinking of Dean Winchester when she says this- and a knife, who stabbed this poor innocent girl five times in the chest.

She manages to get her voice to hitch on the word 'knife,' and after that the chubby middle-aged policeman talking to her looks absolutely frantic at the thought that she might be about to cry. He fetches her a shock blanket, and calls her mother.

Amelia is sad-eyed and close-mouthed when she shows up at the crime scene to pick Claire up. Her long, narrow fingers pick at themselves nervously, but the cops don't seem to notice how guilty her mother looks. In the end they let her leave without even taking her picture or confirming if the name she gives them is real. Claire expects an outburst once they're alone together in the car, but her mother stays quiet, even when she eyes the half-dried blood transferring from Claire's clothes to the seat of the car.

When they get back to the house, she bundles Claire into the shower, puts Claire's bloody clothes in the kitchen sink with cold water and vinegar, and then disappears. Three hours later, she reappears with $8000 in cash, a disposable cell phone, a hex bag, and a credit card under the name Carrie Brownstein.

"The hex bag will hide you from angels and demons both," Amelia says. She sounds tired, and Claire wishes she could feel guilty about that. She's all her mother has left, and that should matter to her, but it doesn't really. Both she and her mother have been broken for years.

"I cleaned out the safety deposit box." Amelia doesn't look at her while she's talking. "I thought, if you're going after him, that you might need some things."

Claire nods, once.

"The Winchesters gave me that credit card," Amelia says. "So be careful with it. I don't have a weapon, but there's a pound of salt in the pantry and of course you know the blood sigils-"

Claire cuts her off with a hug. "I'll be fine, Mom. Thanks."

"Take the Honda," Amelia says.

Claire does. The last time she sees her mother, Amelia is standing in the front window of their apartment, hands loose at her sides as she watches Claire drive away.

* * *

When the angels fell, their sundered Graces spilled over the earth like fine rain. As the days pass, the droplets of Grace collect and run into tiny rivulets, like raindrops on a windowpane. Claire doesn't know what's drawing them together. It isn't gravity, she's pretty sure, or magnetism; Grace isn't so physical. She can't even see it, not really. It's something different than seeing, one of those scars left behind on her soul that she doesn't know how to explain even to herself.

She comes across a stream of it two days and three kills after leaving Houston. The mattress in the $40-a-night motel with threadbare carpet is lumpy and hard, but when she wakes just after 2 am, the night is quiet, with no sign of what woke her. Blade in hand, she scans the room, then cracks open the door of her motel room to survey the parking lot. As soon as the night air hits the back of her throat, she knows what woke her up, and she slips on her sneakers and walks around to the alley behind the motel. The pavement around the dumpsters is littered with bits of half-decomposed cardboard boxes, and the hot summer rain from earlier in the afternoon fills potholes scattered across the concrete.

It takes a minute, but she finds the Grace running down the old bricks of the building across the alley from the motel, a snaking liquid line a couple inches across that glows a ghostly blue. She can't tell where it's coming from or where it's going, but when she holds out her hand and lets the Grace pool in her palm, it's hot and heavy like quicksilver.

Claire cups her hands together and waits as they slowly fill and then run over. Her whole body is quivering, alight with the rushing memory of consuming fire. The seconds stretch, spiraling away from her as she lifts her hands to her mouth and drinks.

The scorch of it in her belly and lungs is gorgeous, but it only lasts for a moment. The first painful surge of power quickly subsides into a warm hum that spreads through her bones. When she tilts her hands to suck the last drops off her fingertips, her hands are dry and empty, and just underneath the skin, there's a glow like radioactivity, like an explosion in slow motion, pressing her physical body thin and tight.

* * *

After that, her work gets easier. The fallen have always been simple to identify, for her, even in their variations. When they landed, some retained their memories and personalities, while some didn't. Claire has theories about this; she suspects that some angels were so predatory, so in the habit of possessing and impersonating and destroying innocent human beings, that when they fell they naturally assumed the shapes of their victims. Others have had less practice. With the Grace under her skin, even the most human of them are obvious to her, brighter and sharp-edged.

She doesn't allow herself to wonder which category Castiel might fall into. Is he still wearing her father's face? She shakes off the question every time it occurs to her. It doesn't matter what he looks like. She's confident that she'll recognize him from a single glimpse whether he looks like Jimmy Novak or a cloud of light or anything in between.

She's pretty sure by now that all the angels fell, not just the warriors but also the accountants and librarians and gardeners of Heaven, the knuckles and tongues of God. Whatever the type of fallen, the same sense that lets her identify them shows her the simplest way to catch each of them alone.

As she travels north, she comes across several more handfuls of Grace, and with each drop she's becoming less human. Of course, she hasn't been entirely human for some time, not since she was a volcano's virgin sacrifice. Now, when she stills herself and concentrates on not being seen, people don't see her. Their eyes just slide right off, so she can walk along crowded sidewalks, through shops and offices, without ever being noticed. She visualizes each arc of her blade before she attacks, and when the time comes, her movements are faster than anyone would expect them to be. She surprises herself. It's a good feeling.

Claire carves her way north through Texas, through Dallas and Oklahoma City to Tulsa, where a fallen wearing the face of an elderly black woman tells her a rumor of two brothers hunting demons in St. Louis. She is surprised, when she finds she's separated the woman's head from her shoulders, to find how angry she is at just the mention of the Winchesters.

When she gets close to St. Louis, the fury in her veins threatens to light her on fire. It gets worse when she can't find any trace of them anywhere. When she stares down at the bloody corpse of her last good lead, she starts to fear she really is going to spontaneously combust. It would hardly be the strangest thing to ever happen to her, but she makes herself breathe, swallows the fire down and chases a pair of fallen further east into Indiana.

The fallen never seem to be ready for her. Sometimes, if the situation allows for it, she will make them kneel and fold their hands behind their heads. Then she asks them questions, so she knows that many of them have heard of her. They call her the Daughter, though they never say whose, and they are frightened of her. Their fear doesn't make them smarter. Every time, even when they put up a fight, she is able to cut them open. Even the ones who used to be warriors can't match how powerful she is now.

Claire wonders about that, sometimes, but what's the point? She shrugs it off as a combination of angelic arrogance, underestimation of humanity, and awkwardness in their new bodies. Most of the fallen don't even have angel blades anymore, and she's learned that any strike from any weapon that would kill a human will kill them. She feels a bitter, complicated satisfaction at the opportunity to teach them the fragile nature of mortality like they taught her what it meant to be alone.

* * *

Since she left her mother's house, she hasn't spent more than one night anywhere. It might be more thorough to establish a home base somewhere and spiral outward, but she just doesn't want to. Traveling feels right. Besides, there are the human authorities to consider. It's safer to leave her crime scenes behind her before suspicion falls on the quiet girl traveling alone. She'd rather float on through before any one place gets its hooks in her.

She reads the newspaper sometimes, if she gets breakfast in a coffee shop with free newspapers. Several times she's seen articles about the Falling, as people are calling it now. There's a lot of speculation about what exactly happened that night. Although people agree on a few key facts- meteors fell all over the world, and there were simultaneous appearances of people without histories, some without any memories at all- they agree on little else. One popular theory involves some geek speak about meteor-induced mass hallucinations and amnesia. Claire tries hard not to be disgusted at the people clinging to willful blindness.

After about a month of traveling, on a humid evening just after the Fourth of July, she stops to eat in a worn little diner outside Dayton, Ohio. At seven o'clock on a Tuesday, the place is almost deserted, just her and a grizzled old white man in a booth reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. There's an old television riveted to the wall above the counter playing a silent baseball game. After the waitress brings Claire an overcooked cheeseburger and limp fries, she leans back against the counter with a sigh, changes the channel to the evening news and turns up the volume.

It starts out with a report on tornado damage on the other side of the state, typical for the Midwest this time of year, and Claire is barely listening. Then the topic changes and it catches her attention.

"The Cincinnati Police Department would like to emphasize that the persons affected by the meteor shower are not believed to be a threat to the safety of our community." A polished white woman is standing in front of a podium. "Citizens can rest easy, and go about your lives as usual. The investigation into the effects of the meteor shower is ongoing, and updates will continue to be released on a regular basis. We would like to reassure the public that we have found no evidence to suggest that anything other than the timing and extent of the shower was unusual. We have no reason to believe that anyone is in danger at this time either from whatever caused this event, or from the people affected."

"That was Cincinnati Police spokeswoman Nancy Wallace calling for calm in the face of ongoing demonstrations in downtown Cincinnati." The reporter in front of the camera, a young black man, is standing on a street Claire recognizes. "Demonstrators are expressing support for the figure some are calling the Fire Daughter. They claim she is a young woman responsible for a string of attacks on victims of the meteor shower. Several witnesses claim they saw her at the site of a brutal double murder yesterday just two blocks away from here. Police and WKRC News 12 have been unable to obtain any security camera footage supporting this claim, and the perpetrator of these attacks has not been officially identified."

The reporter approaches a demonstrator, a scruffy young white man with messy hair pulled back in a bandana. His cardboard sign reads HUMAN SOLIDARITY. "Can you tell me why you're out here on the streets tonight?"

"Someone's gotta stand up for the humans, man. It's all, like, falling apart, but she's standing up for us!"

"What's falling apart?"

"The, like, barriers between the dimensions. Space aliens are infiltrating human society. We've got to defend ourselves, you know? Deadly force if necessary, man. The government needs to wake up. We should all be following the Fire Daughter's example!"

The camera cuts back to the reporter, who is clearly wavering between bemused and troubled. "Live from the cosmic struggle on the streets of Cincinnati, this is Bill Ervin for WKRC."

Claire finishes her burger, silently leaves a generous tip for the waitresses, and drives five more hours northeast before she stops for the night. It's not that she's jealously guarding her status as the one who kills the angels, it's really not. She doesn't blame people for being suspicious of the fallen. It's smart of them. She just doesn't want them to get in her way. Humans are so soft and messy. She is sharp edges and angles, broken glass and jagged steel shards. She isn't compatible with humanity anymore.

* * *

By the end of July, the fallen are getting stronger. Some of them have tracked down dribs and drabs of Grace, though she has yet to encounter one with more than she has. In Pittsburgh, she spends three days tracking down a young woman with the ability to put humans to sleep with a touch of two fingers to their foreheads and move small objects without touching them.

By the time Claire corners her in the basement of a bank-owned foreclosure in a small, sad neighborhood, she's exhausted. Fatigue makes her stupid, and that's probably why, when she advances on the fallen with her angel blade raised, she's just barely too slow. The fallen lunges for Claire's knees, fast as an insect, and at the same time she shoves invisibly at Claire's hand. The psychic push sends the blade skidding harmlessly over the fallen's shoulder. Before Claire gets her balance, she's on her back, struggling for control of the blade.

The fallen slams her elbow into the floor and the blade skitters from her nerveless fingers. Several wild seconds pass, Claire panting desperately as they wrestle. By the time she pins the fallen on the concrete basement floor, twisting one arm behind her back and grinding her cheekbone viciously into the grime, Claire has a split lip and bloody knuckles. Adrenaline is sparking through her muscles like tiny electric shocks.

"Why did the angels fall?" she asks. More than fifty fallen, and not one has had a conclusive answer to that question. The young woman shrugs as well as she can with her shoulders pressed to the concrete. Claire searches her face, trying to decide if she's lying, but her expression gives nothing away. She is Asian American, small but self-contained and powerful, and self-assured in a way that most of the fallen have been unable to sustain in the face of their new, painful humanity.

"Is there war in Heaven?" Claire asks. Again, just a shrug.

"Who is the leader of the fallen here on Earth?" This time, the fallen's eyes flick to the ground and back up, and Claire waits for an answer.

"There isn't one," she says finally, her voice a hoarse croak. Claire eases up the pressure on the arm twisted up behind her back, lets the fallen have space to breathe.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"I have been called Eremiel," the fallen answers. Claire is surprised, both at the honesty, and because she remembers her.

"The prison guard," she says. "The soul keeper. You served under Uriel for a time."

Eremiel inclines her head, just slightly. Her forehead bumps the ground.

"I'm looking for someone," Claire says. "If you tell me where to find him, I won't kill you." This is a lie.

"Who?" Eremiel grits out against the concrete.

"Castiel."

The name sucks all the air out of the room. The look Eremiel gives her is wary. "What do you want with the Scourge of Heaven?"

Claire just raises her eyebrows. That nickname must be new; she doesn't remember it. She feels an itching curiosity about what Castiel has been doing to earn himself such bile from his fellow angels, but she doesn't want Eremiel to see that she's distracted. "Do you know where to find him?"

"He's been sighted in Kansas," Eremiel says. Then she surprises Claire again by volunteering, "I've heard whispers that all of this- the Falling- was his fault, and given every other fucked up thing he's done, it wouldn't surprise me. If you do track down the self-righteous bastard, stab him in the face for me."

Claire snorts humorlessly at that, and briefly considers allowing Eremiel to walk away. She has been remarkably helpful. But Eremiel ruins it by continuing, "If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be stuck in these filthy bodies, cozying up to mud monkeys just to survive."

"Is he with the Winchesters?" Claire asks.

Eremiel hisses. "Probably. I haven't heard or seen anything of them since the Fall, but all Heaven knows where Castiel's loyalties lie. Feel free to stab those arrogant maggots in the face as well."

Rationally, Claire knows that the Winchesters aren't the villains of her story. Her father was already lost to her when they showed up. It's the angels that picked him up out of his normal, happy family and turned him into a scorched out puppet for their Apocalypse, and the Winchesters were tormented by the angels just as much as her family has been. But she can't help but remember the way the brothers were so relieved to see Castiel in her father's body, like they preferred Jimmy possessed. She remembers the back of her father's head as he walked away from her, and by the time she realizes how tightly her fingers have tensed, Eremiel is choking.

Claire releases her. Eremiel sags against the floor, her face pressed into the rough concrete. Claire leans over and snatches up the angel blade from the floor. In one smooth arc, she buries it in the back of Eremiel's skull. She's dead before she knows what hit her.


	3. Job 4:20

Job 4:20

 _Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever._

* * *

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* * *

It doesn't surprise her to hear that her father's body is most likely with the Winchesters, or that the Winchesters are in Kansas, but it does surprise her when she can't find them anywhere in Lawrence. She stakes out their old house for two days, until she starts to itch with the boring unproductiveness of it.

There are exactly five fallen living in Lawrence. She spends a couple days tracking them down and killing them all, being sure to be unobtrusive. It's not that hard to hide the deaths of people without families or jobs or identities, but she doesn't want to draw so much attention to her activities that the police drive her out of town before she's ready to move on. None of the fallen have anything helpful to say, and she wonders if Eremiel was lying, or just wrong.

Claire is starting to consider whether burning down the Winchester's childhood home would get them to come to her, from wherever they are. Before she decides she really is that desperate, though, she has an idea.

Missouri Mosely is partially retired now, but she's still listed under Psychics in the elderly yellow pages in Claire's motel room nightstand. When she calls the number, Missouri seems surprised that anyone still wants her expertise, but Claire's soft politeness nets her an appointment for a tarot reading the next afternoon.

She wants to get on Missouri's good side, so she has a cover story fabricated out of Castiel's memories of the Winchester brothers' early career. She's decided to be a hunter with a demon problem, in need of advice from the Winchesters, who for all their faults are the most experienced, and most still-alive, experts in the field. She has a chain of hunter names to rely on in case Missouri is suspicious: Bobby Singer, deceased, was friends with the late Olivia Lowry, who partnered with Roger Morris before he was killed, and Morris, she's prepared to say, was friends with her entirely fictional dead hunter mother. The death rate among hunters makes her list both plausible and comfortably unverifiable.

She recites her story over and over until it's second nature, until she almost starts to believe it herself. When she sits down at Missouri's table and opens her mouth, though, something else comes out.

"My name is Claire Novak. I'm looking for my father," she says.

Missouri smiles and reaches over to pat her hand. "Yes, dear, I know." Her mannerisms are grandmotherly, but there's something dangerous in her eyes.

"I-" It looks like not lying to a psychic was a good impulse. "I heard he was with the Winchesters," Claire says.

Missouri ignores her entirely. "You've given yourself such a large task," she says. "Awfully large for a teenager on her own."

Claire shrugs. Maybe if she had a clearly defined goal she would feel overwhelmed, but every step of the way she's just been doing the things that seem best at the time. It's not like she set out to kill every fallen on the planet, or the continent, or even every one she sees. It's just that when she sees them, killing them is the only thing that makes sense, and she can't _not_ see them. But she doesn't want to tell Missouri any of this.

"Why, on the news yesterday there was a special about the Daughter and her copycats."

"Copycats?" Claire asks.

Missouri sucks her teeth at her. "Didn't you know? There are at least two killers inspired by you on the east coast, and one in California. And surely you heard about Atlanta?"

Claire shakes her head mutely.

"There were riots every night last weekend. A mob lynched two of the fallen, a couple of the obvious ones who landed without any memories at all. They carved "Go Home" into their stomachs. The photos are all over the internet. The mobs in Baltimore and Sacramento didn't kill anyone, but they did smash some windows and burn a car or two. Barbaric behavior, but I suppose you don't mind that."

Claire can't parse the flatness in Missouri's voice. Does she approve of the mobs- and Claire- or not?

"I suppose if you haven't been watching the news you have no idea about the debate in Congress," Missouri continues. "About whether or not it's legal to detain the fallen without cause. They have no proof of citizenship, see, and so none of us can know if they're terrorists. Or so they're saying. There's talk of getting local police forces involved in tracking every one of them down."

Claire shifts in her seat. "Why are you telling me this?"

Missouri frowns. "Isn't it obvious?"

Claire feels young and stupid, and it makes her frown defensively. "No."

"This is bigger than you," Missouri says. "Your actions have repercussions. It wouldn't be fair to you not to make you aware of them."

"I just want to find my dad," Claire says. The thought that she has some kind of responsibility to global politics makes her angry, and the anger leaks into her voice.

Missouri looks at her for a long moment, and when she speaks again her voice is softer, almost sad. "Of course you do, dear."

"So are you going to help me?" Claire demands.

"I can point you in the direction of Castiel and the Winchesters," Missouri says quietly, and Claire suppresses the feeling that Missouri is evading the question.

"Where are they?" she asks. Missouri produces a tablet computer and opens it to a map. For an old woman she seems incongruously technology-savvy.

"They are in Kansas," Missouri says. "But not in Lawrence. It's about a four hour drive to Lebanon, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're expecting you."

* * *

Lebanon is a dingy collection of sad, faded houses. The heat is dry, not muggy, but there is no shade anywhere, just an unbroken expanse of flat blue sky and pale dry grass baking under a hard sun. Even with sunglasses, the glare gives Claire a headache. Missouri only hummed mysteriously when Claire asked where exactly in Lebanon she could find the Winchesters, but now that she sees how tiny the town is, she's less irritated about that. The only motel in town has 18 rooms, 17 vacancies, and a broken neon sign. She checks into her room, drops her duffel on the bed, and goes for a walk to shake the stiffness out of her muscles after the drive.

Sweat is trickling down her spine by the time she's been walking for half a minute. There aren't many people out and about, but whether that's the heat or just the fact that the roads don't have sidewalks, she doesn't know. There's a serious lack of trees, and she's tired. She's so close to Castiel she can feel her skin buzzing, but instead of feeling excitement, or anticipation, or even apprehension, she mostly just wants to be done for the day. She wants to find a river with a swimming hole, take off her shoes and go wading. She wants to call a time out, take a day to only think about minnows and keeping her balance on slimy river rocks.

On the second block she strolls down, she finds a small church with a battered wooden sign that reads 'Chapel of the Holy Martyrs.' The whir of a fan trickles out of the front door, which is propped open with a battered folding chair. The interior is dim; the light shining through the colored glass of the windows onto the pews reminds Claire of the church she spent twenty minutes in one evening in Decatur. The blood of the old man she'd found lighting candles had spilled over the carpet in just that shade of red. She finds herself walking inside.

At first she thinks she's the only one there. It's the middle of the day on a Thursday, so that's not surprising. She walks to the front of the church and stops in front of the statue of the Virgin ensconced next to the altar. It's been a long time since she's felt- imagined that she felt- the presence of God in a church sanctuary. These days, churches mostly bring the bitter taste of ashes to her tongue, but the icon's pale skin and hollow eyes remind her of her mother, so she presses two fingers to her lips and then to the center of the Virgin's chest like the shadow of a kiss. When she turns around again, she sees the figure sitting in a pew up against the back wall, his elbows resting heavily on his knees.

He's not wearing the trench coat, or the suit. It must be almost a hundred degrees out, so jeans and a loose t-shirt, sweat darkening the armpits, makes sense, but she's still struck with a sense of unbearable loss. Those clothes belonged to her father, and the thought that the angel may have thrown them away makes her furious. She strides down the aisle toward him, until he is barely an arm's length away.

Then he tilts his head up and looks at her with her father's clear blue eyes, and she doesn't know what she's feeling anymore. There's so much of it all at once. It lands on her and she can feel her bones crack under the strain.

"Claire." It's her father's voice and not her father's voice at the same time. Castiel has that same bright-edged look about him that the other fallen have, like a split second ago a flash went off and now it's dark again.

"Castiel." There is a long moment where neither of them move or say anything. Her blade is in her hand, but she doesn't really know why. Does she want to kill him? She's missed him so painfully, like ash misses the flame, and she hates him as sharp as ice. She wants everything, and she doesn't know where to begin.

"You've come a long way."

She doesn't answer him. The distance counted in miles is so trivial it's beyond meaningless.

"What are you seeking?" The look in Castiel's eyes is water in winter.

"Give my father back to me," she grits out. "His term of service is up. Find someone else."

Castiel looks at the floor, and for a second she thinks he's not going to answer. Finally, he says, "There was… a battle. For the fate of the world. I was killed, in this body. This body was killed. And then I was brought back. I used to think it meant…" he trails off. Claire shifts from one foot to the other waiting for him to continue. "Your father's soul wasn't brought back when I was. I believe he may be in Heaven."

"You _believe_." Claire's fury explodes out her mouth.

"I hope," Castiel says, like that's better. "What are you looking for, if not hope?"

"Revenge," she spits at him, even though it's inexpressibly more complicated than that. His stillness stirs up the chaos inside her. Her jumbled sharp edges are cutting each other, and she is bleeding out. She feels like she might have only minutes left to live.

"For what?" There is no tension in him, only sorrow. The question doesn't sound rhetorical; she gets the impression that if she answers correctly, he might agree that she is owed everything. He might hold up his chin to give her better access to his throat. All of a sudden she knows she doesn't want his blood so much as she wants him to understand.

"God stopped Abraham," she says, because she doesn't really know how else to say it. She's been practicing this for so long and now the words are coming out all wrong. "When he was going to sacrifice his son. God sent a substitute sacrifice, because He _loved_ Abraham. But he didn't stop Jepthah from killing his daughter. He didn't stop my father, and he didn't stop me."

Castiel looks ragged, all of a sudden, like a flag left out too long in the wind and rain. "God is gone," he says. Then, quieter, full of despair: "He's always been gone."

She can't bear the pity in his eyes, so she shouts wordlessly, and slams the blade into the back wall of the chapel right next to Castiel's ear. He doesn't even flinch, just looks at her with those eyes.

"I'm sorry," he says. "You deserve better."

She breaks. The blade falls from her limp fingers, her shoulders sag, and ugly, undignified sobs crack from her throat. Castiel looks helpless, until she leans forward into his chest. Then he just wraps his arms around her. For a minute or two, she lets herself pretend that he's her dad again, that she's six and crying because she fell off her bicycle.

"How am I supposed to do this?" she asks, when she has enough breath back to speak.

Castiel looks confused, and briefly she considers stabbing him in the gut to communicate a tiny portion of her distress.

"I was the sacrifice," she makes herself explain through clenched teeth. "I was supposed to be all used up, burnt alive, but I'm not dead. I don't know how I'm supposed to be alive now. How am I supposed to live, when all I am inside is- is ashes?"

Castiel shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know," he says, and now there are tears in his eyes too.

* * *

When Sam and Dean Winchester bust through the church door like superheroes on a tear, they don't seem happy to see Claire crying on Castiel's shoulder. In fact, they seem unhappy that Castiel is in town at all, like he's a five year old they need to keep from wandering off by himself. The presence of a random crying teenager is incidental, though they do have the courtesy to look chagrined when she introduces herself. Castiel seems entirely unimpressed with their efforts to make him feel guilty for leaving without saying anything about where he was going. They argue fruitlessly with him, and then with each other, and then, finally, they turn on her.

"What are you doing here?" Dean demands gruffly. She doesn't know if it's the Grace thrumming through her or just the perspective of someone outside humanity looking in, but when he pulls on that outer layer of fierceness that's supposed to convince her to obey him, she can only see how wounded and lonely he looks.

Sam is more outwardly polite, but she can feel his suspicion lurking. He wants to like her, but his stance says he's connected the dots and knows that she's the one killing the fallen. He is much, much older than the boy from Castiel's old memories, but it looks like he's kept that sense of morality. Although he protests when Dean looms over her, if anyone here is going to give her real trouble for the path of bodies she's left in her wake, it's probably going to be Sam.

In the face of their prickliness, Claire considers delivering Eremiel's stab to the face, rather than Missouri's message. She can see each arc of every potential attack glittering in the air before her. Killing humans seems different than killing the fallen, though, so she just narrows her eyes at them both and says, "Missouri says hello. And also that it wouldn't kill you two to go visit her sometime, for example whenever you'd like to stop running around like chickens with your heads cut off causing two problems for every one that you solve."

Dean splutters at her until Sam laughs at him mockingly. Castiel hauls himself off the pew, his hand a constant pressure on Claire's upper arm like he's really hoping she's not about to bolt. She still hasn't completely decided not to kill him. He deserves it. But, like her, he's diminished, like all that's left of the raging fire is the after-image imprinted on her eyelids, and somehow, she's not really clear how, she finds herself following him back to the Winchesters' car, back to their home for dinner.

* * *

Dean makes surprisingly good burgers, better than any of the greasy diners and fast food joints she's been frequenting, but dinner is painfully awkward. This isn't all, or even mostly, due to her presence. Watching Castiel interact with Dean and Sam highlights just how much of their story she's missed. They obviously have a complicated and painful history, and now their conversation is full of half-completed sentences and emotions cut off at the root.

They're half finished eating by the time the conversation works its limping way around to her and the blood on her hands. It's obvious they've been following the news reports, and know what she's done. It's less obvious why they haven't taken it on themselves to stop her. They clearly don't want all the fallen dead, not judging by the way they both look at Castiel- Sam like Castiel is an injured puppy he wants to mend, Dean like Castiel is brighter than everything else in the room.

Sam and Dean dance around the issue, glancing at Castiel like he's going to care what they say to her. Castiel is the one who finally comes out and says it. "Will you stop killing them?" he asks.

She looks at him for a long second, and she can feel the Grace gathering hot and hard behind her eyes. It is incomprehensible to her that he would think he has a right to ask her that question, and she has no idea how to make him understand. Finally, she tilts her head at Dean while keeping her gaze pinned on Castiel.

"Are you fucking him with my father's body?" she asks, clear and cruel, and from the look on Dean's face the answer is _No, but I wish he would_.

After that the conversation mostly stays on more neutral territory: Metatron's coup d'etat and speculation on what he might be planning, rumors of civil war in Hell, the record heat wave on the east coast. Sam suggests that it might be possible to stuff all the loose Grace back into the angels and send them back to Heaven; he gives her a meaningful look that she ignores. Dean is more worried about the state of Heaven now that it's echoing empty, while Castiel is quietly choking on sorrow and self-doubt. Claire eats her burger and says as little as possible. Her father is dead, and coming here was a mistake.


	4. Transformation

_The beauty of fire, the beauty of fire, the beauty_  
 _and the secret of fire is that to burn something is to send it back, released from its body, to the_  
 _energies of the other world. To see a fire raging is to see the process of_  
 _transformation_  
 _whereby matter returns to spirit, with one's own ecstatic eyes-_  
 _wool, cloth, flesh, what were they before the cosmos was formed?_  
 _They return in glory and fury._

-from "Jephthath's Daughter: A Lament," by Alicia Ostriker

* * *

.

* * *

The bed in the motel in Lebanon is a lumpy torture device. Claire finds herself laying awake in the early morning, just staring at the ceiling. Sam tried to insist that she stay the night at the bunker, but she didn't see the point. Her father wasn't there, and she isn't going to kill Castiel until she sorts out whether she misses him more desperately than she hates him. Until then she doesn't see any reason to torture herself with the tiny wrinkles around his eyes and the low timbre of his voice that reminded her more of her dad the more she heard it.

She ends up on the road before the sun rises, heading west on US-36. The sky pales behind her, lighting up the fields like the blades of grass are ghosts. She is scoured clean of emotion, without destination or goal; she wouldn't be surprised to hold her hands to the dawn light and find it shines right through her.

About an hour and a half on the highway and she sees signs for a state park. She follows the road signs down to a small lake, and parks near the shore. When she walks down to the water, she can see the Grace pooling in the shallows like an oil slick, glittery and dangerous in the early light. Claire rests her palm on the surface. There is more Grace here than she's ever seen in one place before; the sensation is like wrapping her fingers around a fresh cup of coffee, almost hot enough to hurt but still delicious. She holds her hands in the sear and lets the Grace seep in through her pores. She captures it all, until in the spaces where she is too tired to feel anger or grief or despair, she feels the pop of sparks.

She hits interstate 70 and keeps heading west. It's as good a direction as any other. Just across the border into Colorado, she stops for blueberry pancakes at a brightly painted café. One of the other patrons is a middle aged Hispanic man in a navy sport coat. He moves hesitantly, and she wonders if he might be one of the fallen who lost their memories. It astounds her that the people around him don't instantly see how inhuman he is.

She follows him out into the parking lot in an echo of her first kill, though there are no SUVs to hide behind this time. She wonders idly if she has enough Grace now to make not just herself but the whole scene invisible to passersby as she kills him. The security cameras are already fried; she burns them out of habit everywhere she goes.

It turns out she doesn't need to worry about being observed. The fallen has a car parked around the corner of the building, out of sight of the street, and she easily corners him between his car and the blank back wall of the café. He sees the blade in her hand and clenches his jaw.

"You're the Daughter," he says. "Aren't you." He has enough memory to know what he is, then.

She nods, letting him talk. She's still following the habit of interrogation even though she's run out of questions to ask.

"You're going to kill me," he says.

"Yes," Claire answers. She is.

"Why?" He seems as much puzzled as sad.

"Why?" Claire spits at his feet. Her dad taught her how to spit when she was nine. He said it wasn't ladylike, which meant she wasn't supposed to do it where her mother could see, and he smiled at her in the way he had that was only for her, no one else. "Why not? I'm lifeless, I'm hopeless. Why the hell not light a river of fire across the country? The stars fell from heaven- it's the end of the world. And you bastards deserve it. Why not send a few of you to hell before the lights go out?"

He looks at her blankly, uncomprehending, and she is suddenly fracturing with impatience. She grabs him tightly by the collar to keep him still. Her fingers hiss like brands where they twist the fabric into his throat, leaving behind painful red marks on his skin. He tries to pull away from her, panicking like she's just now convinced him that he's going to die, but the Grace smoldering in her bones makes her stronger than he is.

She slides the blade in under his ribs and up, up into his heart. The puncture is small, and most of the blood remains in his abdominal cavity, but he dies quickly. She leaves him there, tucked up against the front wheel of his car like he just decided to have a sit down right there in the parking lot, and drives away.

Claire is humming along with the radio as she merges back onto the interstate. There is a clarity in her heart; she is molten fury, pure violence, the edge of a blade. Everything else is stripped away, and although the aching hole in her chest may never truly go away, she thinks this may be as good as it ever gets. She doesn't know where she's going- maybe she never really did- but she knows what she's doing on the way.


End file.
